A fine WordPress.com site

Operation: Yummy Mummy

by Persephone on January 12, 2016

Hiya! Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? So much has happened since the last posts on here. The last post I really thought was here was The End? And it was. But a lot has happened in the months since then. I was questioning why I was blogging. I was questioning why I was doing anything pretty much. Questioning why I even existed. I tried setting up a new blog that was more about day to day life and not as personal as this blog has been, but it never felt right at the time. I guess because I always blogged when I was low, when I needed to pour out my heart and blogging about being a parent wasn’t what I needed. I think I was trying to make this blog something else and I wasn’t happy anymore. I wasn’t happy with the blog, I wasn’t happy with me. I just plain wasn’t happy. So now, over half a year later and so very close to Robin’s first ever birthday, I’m in the process of changing my life.

I was referred to a local course that helps mums with post natal depression and it made me realise that I completely lost my sense of identity, but not when I got pregnant. Not when I became a mum. I lost my identity somewhere in 2009 when I decided to make the decision to become a mum, only to wait over 3 years. My identity was, for three years, the infertile one. But then I became a mum so who was I? I was just a mum. And that wasn’t, isn’t who I want to be.

Robin has been such a different baby. Easier in a lot of ways. Happier and far, far smilier, but she’s also needed feeding more. She took longer to take to food, to drop her milk. So, I (who has no identity other than Mother), was trapped more and more. For all her easiness and joy, I found it harder. I just wanted space. I just wanted time. I wanted to be me, well, to figure out who I even am. But she was taking longer. So I felt worse and worse.

I guess with a combination of her growing up (almost 1, only 2 milk feeds a day, finally gained some weight, pretty much sleeping through) and the course I’ve been on, I’m working some things out. And so, to find me, I’ve thought a lot about what I like. Or what I used to like.

I like to exercise, to have 30 minutes where I’m not in my head. It could be swimming, jogging or aerobics, but I like it.

I like to read.

I like to be up to date with my Marvel and Star Wars films.

I like to be alone.

And I had blogged for years.

Well, hello 2016 and the year where I make myself happy (because if I’m happy, my family is happy). I’m calling it Operation: Yummy Mummy. It’s not about being the picture of a Yummy Mummy (I’ll never get the figure or beauty for that), but it is about feeling like a Yummy Mummy. It’s about noticing what makes me feel like a failure as a mum, being more active in being a person independent from my children, reaffirming my relationships with friends and my husband. It is about realising the triggers that make me feel down, get me stressed, make my cry hysterically and working on avoiding or fixing them. And, yes, it is about shifting the baby weight which seems to be so much harder to do the second time around. I want to be able to hold conversations with anyone that don’t revolve around children.

And blogging might help. It might not. I might forget about it again within days (I’ve been planning this post for, oh, about 12 days!), but that’s what blogging was originally. It wasn’t planned posts on a regular interval. It wasn’t trying to keep an audience or traffic stats. It was blogging when I needed to. Needed, not wanted. I guess, it was my incredibly public diary. But maybe if I had kept an element of privacy over it, I would have used it more during the darker few months. And I’m not out of the dark yet, so it can only help, right?